Agilent Technologies N5990A-301 PCI Express Link Training Suite Getting Started Guide
Notices © Agilent Technologies, Inc. 2013 No part of this manual may be reproduced in any form or by any means (including electronic storage and retrieval or translation into a foreign language) without prior agreement and written consent from Agilent Technologies, Inc. as governed by United States and international copyright laws. Manual Part Number N5990-11301 Edition 4th edition, Oct.
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Contents 1. INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................6 PCI Express Link Training Suite................................................................................................................................6 2. SOFTWARE INSTALLATION AND UPDATE.............................................................7 Software Update........................................................................................................
Startup Fails..............................................................................................................................................................25 Slow Response..........................................................................................................................................................25 Link Training Fails....................................................................................................................................................
1. Introduction PCI Express Link Training Suite The Agilent PCI Express Link Training Suite (N5990A-301) is a software tool which allows to train PCI Express 3.0 links. It controls the pattern sequencer of an Agilent J-BERT N4903B to bring the device under test into the loopback mode. Enabling the loopback mode is usually a prerequisite for receiver compliance testing. In the following, the PCI Express Link Training Suite is also referred to shortly as “PCIe Link Training Suite” or "software".
2. Software Installation and Update The PCI Express Link Training Suite N5990A-301 runs on a PC which controls the J-BERT. If N5990A-301 is already installed on the PC and shall not be updated, proceed to the next chapter. Software Update If you want to upgrade a previous version of the PCI Express Link Training Suite, please uninstall it first from the PC. Continue with the software installation.
3. Starting and Registering the Software Starting Registered Software Double click on the PCI Express Link Training Suite icon on the desktop or start the software from the Start / Programs / BitifEye menu. If you already registered your software, it will start automatically. Proceed to the next chapter. Software Registration If you start the software without a valid registration key, the window shown in Figure 2 will open. To get a valid registration key, send an e-mail to licensing@bitifeye.
4. Setup There are several instruments which can be controlled by the PCIe Link Training Suite when properly connected: • An N4903B J-BERT is required ◦ If an J20 module is installed, it can be used to generate sinusoidal interferences ◦ If jitter and/or SSC is available, these parameters can be controlled ◦ If the AUX OUT is available, two-lane data can be generated • An N4916B de-emphasis signal converter can be used to generate de-emphasized signals.
5. Using the Software Connecting To The Instruments Once the software started, the main window and the connection dialog will appear as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3: Main window and connection dialog In the “Connection Dialog” window: 10 1. Select the J-BERT configuration (one or two channels) 2. Enter the VISA address of the J-BERT 3. Select whether you want to use an N4916B de-emphasis signal converter or not, and whether you want to use an N4880A reference clock multiplier or not 4.
8. Click the „Connect“ button 9. If the connection was successful, the button „Apply and Close“ will be enabled, see Figure 4 10. Click the „Apply and Close“ button. This will reset and initialize the instruments • If you don't want to reset the instruments, click the “Close” button. However, the “Apply and Close” button is recommended, to initialize the instruments into a wellknown state.
Main User Interface After the successful connection to the instruments, the main window is displayed as given in Figure 5.
Help In the “Help” menu (top right corner of the main window), you will find: • The "Getting Started Guide" (F1; this document) • The "Language Guide", which describes the script language you can use in expert mode • The "About" dialog, with version and license information Basics The basic operation of the PCIe Link Training Suite would be as follows: • Select a PCIe revision • Select a loopback pattern • Apply the settings to the instruments and train the device into loopback Now you can adjust
Demo Mode When you close the connection dialog without connecting instruments, you enter the Demo Mode. The Demo Mode is intended for demostration purposes, where no actual hardware is available. Most functions will be available, but no instruments are affected. Applying When changing any parameter in the user interface, you'll have to apply those changes to the instruments by clicking the “Apply” button in the bottom left corner of the main window. This applies all parameters at once.
When the de-emphasis signal converter is connected, or when the PCI Express specification 3.0 is used, the current preset is also shown. The “Preset...” button allows to select a preset from a list. The selected preset is applied to the de-emphasis parameters on the right side of the main window, and to the encoded preset hin in the “Loopback Pattern” box. When the de-emphasis levels on the right side of the main window are changed, the corresponding is shown.
Figure 8: Sequence to Loopback Mode All other parameters reflect the standard sequence described in the CTS. Note that “Min. initial TS1 count” and “Min TS1 count before Loopback” are only arbitrary numbers. The actual number of transmitted ordered sets might be slightly different in order to match the J-BERT pattern granularity. There are two presets, which can be selected using the “Preset...” button. Trying both can be helpful for debugging.
Figure 9: Loopback Pattern Settings In the simplest case, a custom pattern file can be a text-file containing only hexadecimal data. Note that the binary data represented by this file must have a 512 bit granularity; otherwise, the pattern cannot be loaded into the J-BERT's pattern memory. The syntax of the selected file is automatically verified before the file can be used.
Error Detector By default, the J-BERT error detector compares all bits from the DUT with the loopback pattern. With the option in the “Error Detector” group box, SKP ordered sets can be excluded from bit comparison. Figure 11: Error Detector Settings Changing this setting (Figure 11) to ignore 8b/10b SKP ordered sets or 128b/130b ordered sets is usually required when the DUT uses its own reference clock.
By default, the generator uses an internal clock source, or an external clock multiplier (N4880A) for system board tests. Note that the N4880A must be connected to the J-BERT and configured in order to use it. You can configure the analyzer's clock to external clock or internal CDR. Voltage Levels You can set the voltage levels for every output independently. Note that when moving any slider, the corresponding parameter will be written to the hardware immediately.
Note that some jitter/SSC parameters will reset the sequencer when modified. This means that the current sequencer state is left and the link training is restarted. With the default settings, this means you'll have to click the “Manual Trigger” button again to start link training. The PCIe Link Training Suite tries to minimize the sequencer resets as much as possible, but it is recommended to keep an eye on the sequencer state when changing jitter or SSC parameters.
Figure 14: Sequencer Control When the “Poll Sequence State” option in the “Options” menu is enabled, the current state of the sequencer is shown. When the sequence contains a loop with a manual break condition, that loop can be ended with the “Manual Trigger” button. BERT Control Figure 15 Shows the BERT control. Here you can control the sequencer, the pattern generator and the analyzer. Figure 15: BERT control The “Insert Bit Error” causes the J-BERT to insert a single bit error into the data stream.
Saving And Loading Settings You can store your current settings using the “Apply and Save...” button in the main window, or via the main menu. Note that before the settings are saved, they are applied to the hardware. Only if applying succeeds, the settings can be saved. This guarantees that only those settings can be saved which are in a consistent state. The settings can be restored at any time using the “Load and Apply...” button. The restored settings are then immediately applied to the hardware.
Figure 17: Expert Mode When the radio button “Generate From Parameters” is checked, the pattern will be automatically generated, i. e. the same way as in nonExpert Mode. When the radio button “Use Custom Script” is checked (see Figure 18), a custom script will be used. The parameters for the automatically generated script are disabled then and have no influence.
To edit the script, click the “Edit Script” button. The script editor, as shown in Figure 19, will pop up. In the script editor, you can edit the sequence and pattern, with a unified syntax. It allows you to define the data using terms common to PCI Express. For example, to generate a TS1 ordered set with the loopback flag set, you can use the macro “TS1(Loopback)”. You can also use the menu to convert pattern data between different representations (binary, hexadecimal, 8b/10b).
6. Troubleshooting Startup Fails The anti-virus software Sophos Endpoint Security might inadvertendly detect the PCIe Link Training Suite as a virus and prevent it from executing. Starting the Link Training Suite then leads to an error message like "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file". In this case, please check if the anti-virus software blocked the executable file of the PCIe Link Training Suite and add it to the exceptions.
7. Switching to Version 1.1 Script The PCIe Link Training Suite v1.0 automatically inserted a pause at the beginning of the link training sequence. You had to click "Manual Trigger" to start link training. The PCIe Link Training Suite v1.1 requires to have this sequence step being defined in the script. When you load a script generated with v1.0 into the new v1.1 software, link training will immediately start after downloaded to the instrument.
8. Support In case of persisting problems with the PCI Express Link Training Suite, please send a problem description to the PCI Express support node pcie-support@bitifeye.com. In case you want to report an error shown in an error dialog, please copy the complete contents into the e-mail. You can press CTRL+C in the error dialog to copy the contents into the system clipboard.
